


lonely like me

by Milieu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Children, Friendship, Gen, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 16:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14312439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: After the destruction of his clan, Kimimaro ends up wandering deeper into the Land of Water instead of leaving it. There, he finds that he isn't as alone as he'd thought.





	lonely like me

**Author's Note:**

> According to Narutopedia, Haku and Kimimaro once briefly met in the anime and Haku at least recognized similarities between them, but they didn't really interact and it never came up again. I couldn't help but feel that this was a wasted opportunity.

By the time the snow starts falling, Kimimaro has lost track of how long he has been alone.

When he first started out, trudging away from the pile of bodies that had once been his clan, his main thought had been to get away from Kirigakure. He's accomplished that by now, he supposes. He suspects that he's only traveled deeper into the Land of Water, but he's far from the shinobi village that would most likely slaughter him for daring to have escaped the initial massacre of his clan.

Were he caught by said shinobi, Kimimaro doesn't doubt that he could give any one of them, and even several at once, more than a decent fight. But he's tired of killing and not keen on dying just yet, so he'll take solace in having simply escaped for now.

It has been weeks now though, and he's still not sure what to do with himself, now that he gets to be the one to decide. He walks, he eats if he can, he finds some secluded place to sleep, and then he does it over again.

By the morning that he wakes up to snowflakes gathering on his eyelashes and bangs, he hasn't had anything to eat in a few days. He can see a village on the horizon, though. People mean sustenance - and danger. The danger that someone will be alerted to his presence who could actually do something about it, at any rate.

It doesn't take long for hunger to win out. Maybe he's far enough from Kirigakure now that no simple peasant farmers will guess who he might be.

Kimimaro makes it to the village outskirts within the day, though he waits until nightfall to enter the village proper.

He weaves between houses unnoticed. He is not, however, alone.

It's a certain, special kind of off-putting, to accept that you're going to have to rummage in a trash bin for your food and then to see that someone else has beaten you to said trash bin. Kimimaro takes a moment to consider and perhaps savor this new form of put-out while observing the boy who has unknowingly pilfered Kimimaro's dinner. He's barefoot despite the cold, this other boy; that's the thing that keeps drawing Kimimaro's attention. It's the only hint that this erstwhile dinner interloper (Or maybe Kimimaro is the interloper here? He's not from the area, after all.) might be more than a simple street urchin.

As Kimimaro watches, the boy comes up with a handful of half-eaten, but otherwise decent, scraps of food. It is at this point that Kimimaro's stomach makes the decision to announce his presence before his mouth can.

The boy jerks around to look at him, a portion of the half-eaten food already stuffed into his cheeks. He looks like a rodent ready to scamper away with what he can carry.

"Hello," Kimimaro says after a long pause.

"Mmf," says the boy. He hurriedly chews and swallows the food he had shoved into his mouth before replying. "Hello."

He doesn't say anything else, regarding Kimimaro with guarded curiosity. After another few moments, Kimimaro ventures, "Aren't your feet cold?" The snow has started to fall again, and Kimimaro's feet are certainly cold.

Something akin to amusement lightens the other boy's expression. "No. I like the cold." He considers Kimimaro for another minute, then motions towards himself and the trash bin. "There's enough here tonight for two people to carry, I think."

Kimimaro doesn't question the invitation. They're both hungry, and neither one cares to be assertive for any other reason. By the time someone within the house stirs, Kimimaro and Haku, as he learns the other boy is called, have stolen away with their arms full of all the food they could salvage.

The lean-to constructed from rubbish is... well, rubbish, but it's the closest to sleeping indoors that Kimimaro has been in a while. Haku confesses that he doesn't want to make a fire where someone could see them, and Kimimaro doesn't even know how, so after they've eaten they huddle together in the nest of threadbare blankets where Haku normally sleeps. It can't be called comfortable, but it's better than sleeping out in the wilderness, with no cover and nothing warm to cling to.

"Did your family all die too?" Haku asks after a while, almost carelessly divulging his own history in just a few words.

"Yes. They're all gone, now."

Kimimaro can feel Haku nod against his shoulder. "...Did you do it? Or did you get away?"

"I got away," Kimimaro says, feeling as though this might not be the answer Haku wanted to hear. "But, they-" He stops, considers. Confirms his own suspicions. "I might have done it, though. Later."

Haku doesn't reply to that out loud, but he squeezes Kimimaro's arm. His hands are small and cool to the touch. Kimimaro doesn't feel the need to ask if Haku had anything to do with his own family dying.

"Where are you going?" Haku speaks again after a while.

"I don't know. I was trying to leave the Land of Water, but I ended up here."

"Well. It's okay that you're here."

"Yeah," Kimimaro agrees. "It's okay."

_It's okay._ He tells himself that, and by the time he falls asleep he almost believes it.

\---

The morning dawns bright, clear, and bone-chillingly cold. Kimimaro isn't yet old enough to appreciate the irony in that thought.

He and Haku stay huddled inside of Haku's little shelter for most of the day, listening to the noise of the villagers going about their business. Few pass by their makeshift shelter, and none acknowledge it. Kimimaro supposes that the people of the Land of Water aren't so foreign as to be unrecognizable.

Somewhere towards the middle of the day, Haku speaks up.

"When you decide where you're going, is it okay if I come too?"

Kimimaro doesn't have to consider long.

"Yeah," he says. "It's okay." And this time, he doesn't have to make himself mean it.

**Author's Note:**

> And then they went on to be lifelong friends and gathered up a bunch of other orphaned kekkei genkai users and it was like Lord of the Flies only with less murder and fewer allegories about human nature. And everyone got to live past the age of 15 and at least made it well into adulthood, the end.


End file.
